Watching the recent Peanut Proud Parade move around Blakely's old Courthouse Square got me to thinking about the things that are really important to small-town citizens, our fellow Georgians and, dare I say with trepidation, a vast majority of Americans.

Mitch Clarke, Blakely native, good Methodist and esteemed editor of a daily newspaper in North Georgia, took a radical approach for his first column of 2012. Instead of listing resolutions and hopes and dreams for the new year, he wrote about things which he has no plans to do. I like that idea. So with apologies to Mitch, please swim with me in this sea of negativity:

We are in the midst of two seasons that are supposed to bring hope to the world. I have no doubt that one of them — the Christmas season — offers exactly that as we celebrate the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. There is no greater season and no greater hope.

Americans of a certain age well remember the halcyon and prosperous days of the 1940s through the ’70s and ’80s when most towns possessed at least one textile manufacturer and possibly a heavier industrial plant as well.

We are all human — even people who want to be president of the United States of America. That’s why Rick Perry, a candidate for the Republican nomination, stepped in “it” (his own words) during the recent GOP debate on the budget and other financial issues. And by “it” he wasn’t referring to ice cream, either. At least he had his boots on.

America is a land conceived from protest. Surely we have not forgotten the fervor of those involved in the original Boston Tea Party, who tossed the Brits' tea into the harbor over high taxes and lack of legislative representation?

The average reader may not have gotten the memo, and perhaps could care less anyway, but deer, dove, turkey and other wild animals aren’t the only species that are squarely in the sights of hunters this autumn.
It is open season on retired government employees and their pensions — the fixed incomes that enable millions of Americans, who gave their working lives to public service, to make their contributions to the nation’s struggling economy.

This country has been in the grips of a 10-year remembrance of the attacks that rocked our nation on Sept. 11, 2001. We have undergone a heartfelt, gut-wrenching recollection of those events, all fully warranted.

Perhaps “Timber Proud” would be an appropriate theme for an event to honor Southwest Georgia’s timber industry and the people who make it go — the growers, those who gather it and haul it to the mill and the paper makers who turn it into a fine commercial product sold across the world.

When you are from where I’m from, it is perhaps hypocritical to be commenting on other states’ highway systems. But, that has never stopped me. But I did not set out to write about the roads in Mississippi or Georgia. My current lament is Alabama’s.

Georgia sportsmen will be able to creep closer to their targets while deer hunting over bait. That is one of the thousands of laws that went into effect in the 50 states on July 1, the date on which most of states, including Georgia, begin their new fiscal year.